Betting and Bluffing

In Camel Up, up to eight players bet on five racing camels, trying to suss out which ones will place first and second in a quick race around a pyramid. The earlier you place your bet, the more you can win — should you guess correctly, of course. Camels don't run neatly, however, sometimes landing on top of another one and being carried toward the finish line. Who's going to run when? That all depends on how the dice come out of the pyramid dice shaker, which releases one die at a time when players pause from their bets long enough to see who's actually moving!

This 2018 edition of Camel Up features new artwork, a new game board design, a new pyramid design, engraved dice, and new game modes, including crazy rogue camels that start the race running in the opposite direction! You never know how a race will end!

One day Coyote crossed the river with his friends, but he was carrying too many things and almost drowned before Bear pulled him out of the water. Poor Coyote had lost everything.

They sat down by a fire to dry off and rest. Coyote became jealous of the other animals because they still had all their things, so he challenged them to a bluffing game to win their belongings. The other animals agreed to the challenge as they thought Coyote would never win. After all, he is known to never tell the truth — but in this game everybody has to lie because no one knows the truth...

In the bluffing game Coyote, you always see the cards of the other players, but never your own. When it's your turn, you must announce a number that is less than the total of all the cards in the game, yet higher than the previous number given. Alternatively, you can challenge the number previously announced. Finally, when all the cards are revealed, you'll see who has the cunning Coyote on their side.

Coyote is in the same game line as Spicy, with the game box and card backs being decorated with a special metallic print in copper. As in the tradition of the Northwest Coast Tribes, copper is a symbol of prosperity and cultural wealth.

The artist Zona Evon Shroyer (Yupik Alaskan Native) is a master of the traditional Northwest Coastal art, whose richness of detail and complexity requires years of study and practice. For the cover illustration of Coyote, she designed a modern silhouette for the coyote, which she then filled in a classical manner with other animal motifs: turtle, beaver, and bear — the animals that he is sitting around the fire with and playing a game, in our little story.

—description from the publisher

In the dice game Da ist der Wurm drin, players want to be the first to have their worm poke its head out of the compost heap at the end of the garden.

To set up the game board, attach a smaller game board with two slots in it to the larger game board on which the worms will crawl. The first slot has a row of daisies by it, while the second slot has a row of strawberries. Each player chooses a color, and places the worm head of that color in the appropriate track on the game board.

On a turn, a player rolls the die, then places the appropriately colored worm section into the track holding his worm. The worm sections come in six colors and range from 1 cm to 6 cm long. On any turn, a player can place her daisy (or strawberry) tile above the worm that she thinks will reach the daisies (or strawberries) first. If that worm does indeed poke its head into view through the slot before any other, then that player can add the daisy (or strawberry) tile to her own worm. (Choose wrong, and you discard your tile.)

The first worm to poke its head out from under the far edge of the smaller game board wins. For a longer game, players can keep their worms going until one stretches its head off the edge of the larger game board.

Haggis is a climbing game in the same family as Zheng Fen and Big Two. It borrows and recombines elements from its parent games - card combinations, bombs, scoring for cards in hand, scoring for cards collected in tricks - and it mixes in equally distributed wild cards and betting that you'll be the first to empty your hand of cards.

In Mindbug, you summon hybrid creatures and send them to battle against your opponent — but when you summon a creature, the opponent may use one of their Mindbugs to take control of it. Outwit your opponent in a fascinating tactical duel in which having the best cards and playing them at the wrong time can be deadly for yourself.

Cards in Mindbug represent weird creatures that all come with unique and powerful abilities such as a Compost Dragon, a Snail Hydra, or a Kangasaurus Rex. Each player starts the game with ten creature cards (five in hand and five in a draw pile) and tries to use them to reduce the opponent's life total to zero. In addition, every player receives two Mindbug cards that can be used to mind control an opposing creature when it is played. This innovative Mindbug mechanism is the core of the game and leads to a unique decision-making process that makes Mindbug feel utterly different from any other card game.

Playing a card doesn't require any resources in Mindbug. As a result, the game has no ramp-up phase (such as gathering resources) and doesn't require weak cards. Since there is also no deck-building, you can start playing right away from a single deck. There is also no unfair advantage as players draw cards from the same deck and always get the chance to mind control the strongest opposing cards. In the end, it all comes down to your own decisions, making the game extremely fair and competitive at the same time.

—description from the publisher